an ensemble of marionettes drift and clack together, their strings extending upwards from their wooden bodies and pulling downward from the clouds. they are in a meadow that is empty but for all the flowers, greenery, and a circumscription of trees. they want to talk to you. the sun is shining, and it feels warm on your tender skin, which is the color it turns when you've been more outside than inside the past few days. birds are chirping in a way you notice you don't recognize. it sounds more like a recording to you than you believe living beings are supposed to sound, like something about the resonance is wrong. tinny, maybe.

the marionettes are certain they want to talk to you. there doesn't seem to be any doubt in them about this fact. their clackening is consistent, their smiles are painted on, and their desire is palpable.

the grass is soft, and your feet are bare. there is heather. the trees are pine, and you can smell them, and they remind you of childhood. not your childhood, just the concept of childhood. a sort of looming, monstrous tall idea of what it means to be young. you smell the pine trees, and you consider the fact that as you get older, you learn more things, but forget things you used to know. you wonder what you used to know. a flash of a face you don't recognize, anymore. you shake your head, like you're trying to dislodge a bug from its resting place.

the cloud that holds the marionettes is slowly moving north, away from you. they are reaching out for you, because they want you. there is no mistake about that. the street lights click on, which doesn't make very much sense, as you are in a meadow, and it's daytime. do street lights turning on always make a noise? or did you imagine it?

you think for a second and realize that you don't firmly recall how you got here. the last place you remember is the underground swimming pool, with the yellow cracked tiles on the floor. the refractions and distortions of stale, chlorinated water. you can taste it, still.

you are talking with the marionette named rosie. he starts to tell his story.

you shoot up in bed. it is 6:13 AM on Black Friday, 2018. your alarm is going off and you have to solve arithmetic problems to disable it. somehow, she has not woken up beside you. her body next to you is nude and smooth like nothing you've known. you imagine that if she were awake, she would've said, "the marionette dream, again?"

you imagine that if she were awake, she would've said, "can you turn that alarm off?"

and you would say, "i'll have it in a second."

but she is not awake.



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